Kraft Heinz announces upcoming 2026 Investor Day

The road to Investor Day

Third quarter of 2024 to the second quarter of 2026 · latest results August 5, 2026

Quarter by quarter

Revenue and EPS link to the filing they come from. Growth is against the same quarter a year earlier; growth and gross margin are calculated by Opportunity Dispatch from the filed figures. ^† Worked out from the 10-K, less the first three quarters. ^‡ From the results release.

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A reset under a new chief executive

Kraft Heinz goes into its Investor Day on November 12, 2026 as a company that has changed its mind about its own shape. In September 2025 it announced a plan to split into two listed companies, one built around Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese, the other around North American staples such as Oscar Mayer and Lunchables. Five months later, with Steve Cahillane newly installed as chief executive, the board paused that work, and on February 11, 2026 the company said it would instead put $600 million of incremental spending into marketing, sales, research and development, product quality and selective price cuts to revive its U.S. business. The event in New York is the first time the new team will lay out a long-term plan in full.

The shares show how long the slide has lasted. They closed at $44.29 on May 9, 2022; on March 16, 2026, a month after the strategy reset, they closed at $21.57, less than half that level. By October 26, 2026 they had recovered some ground, closing at $24.34, still far below where they stood in 2022.

Volume lost, cash kept

The table tells a story of shrinking sales rather than collapsing ones. Revenue declined year on year through 2025, and the company attributed almost all of it to volume: shoppers bought less of its cold cuts, coffee, Lunchables and frozen snacks while prices edged up. Full-year 2025 net sales fell to $24.9 billion, with volume/mix down 4.1 percentage points. The one quarter of reported growth, the first of 2026, owed more to currency than to demand; organic net sales, which strip out currency and divestitures, still slipped.

Profit took a bigger hit than sales. The gross margin slid through 2025 as commodity and manufacturing inflation outran efficiency programs, then jumped in the first quarter of 2026, flattered by unrealized gains on commodity hedges that the company excludes from its adjusted margin, before falling back. Below the gross line, the investment plan is being charged straight to earnings: Adjusted Operating Income, which excludes impairments, restructuring and hedge swings, fell 18.4% to $1.0 billion in the second quarter of 2026 on higher advertising and higher variable compensation expense. Two non-cash write-downs explain the deeply negative diluted EPS in the table: impairment losses of $9.3 billion in the second quarter of 2025, which the company tied to a sustained decline in its share price and market capitalization, and $7.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026, when the quarterly report cited the same trigger along with the market's doubts about whether the investment plan will deliver.

What has held up is cash. Free Cash Flow, operating cash flow less capital spending, rose 15.9% to $3.7 billion in 2025, and reached $1.7 billion in the first half of 2026, up 10.3%, helped by longer supplier payment terms. That funded $949 million of dividends in the half and, as Andre Maciel, the global chief financial officer, said on the second-quarter call, repayment of $1.9 billion of debt at its June maturity and another $1 billion due in 2027. Maciel said, “We expect our 2026 Net Leverage to be no higher than 3.3 times, with a clear path to bring this back down to our target in about 2 years.”

Management says the spending is working

Cahillane's case on the August 5, 2026 call was that early money is already showing up in market share. He said the portion of company revenue gaining or holding share had risen from 21% in 2025 to 36% year-to-date, and in U.S. Retail from 12% to 30%, led by Heinz, which is gaining or holding share across combinations representing over 70% of its revenue. Marketing was up about 36% in the first half and is to reach at least 6% of net sales for the year. Meats and meals remain the weak spots; the company is cutting prices and changing packs on Oscar Mayer and putting more media behind Kraft Mac & Cheese. “And let me be clear, we are increasing investments from a position of strength.” Planned incremental spending was lifted by $100 million to approximately $700 million, most of it for marketing. Cahillane added a caution: “As encouraging as it is that we are running ahead of our expectations, there is still more work to be done.”

Outside the United States the picture is brighter. Emerging Markets net sales rose 10.4% in the second quarter, organic sales 8.5%, and Cahillane said Heinz grew about 12% there. Global Away From Home, the foodservice business, returned to growth in the U.S., helped by World Cup demand the company does not expect to repeat.

A crowded field chasing a shrinking basket

Kraft Heinz is trying to win back volume in a market where volume is leaving. Bain & Company's analysis of NielsenIQ data showed U.S. grocery unit sales fell 1.8% in June 2026 from a year earlier, with prices about a third higher than in 2019, and PepsiCo said the consumer was worse than it had expected. Tighter food-assistance rules are part of the reason: Circana data showed SNAP participation down about 14% by May from a year earlier, and recipients told NielsenIQ they would buy fewer condiments, frozen dinners and ready meals while shifting to staples and lower-priced stores. Store brands keep pressing: private label held 29.1% of U.S. food sales in the first quarter of 2026, according to NielsenIQ figures cited by Bank of America, whose analysts wrote that Campbell's, General Mills and Hormel Foods were more exposed to that pressure than Hershey, Mondelez or Conagra.

Rivals are running similar playbooks with mixed results. General Mills cut base prices on about two-thirds of its North American retail portfolio and still ended fiscal 2026 with volume down and net sales 5% lower, while Conagra held price and lost more volume; General Mills then reported flat organic sales for its first quarter of fiscal 2027 and reaffirmed its outlook. Campbell's said its fiscal 2026 performance was not where it needed to be and reset its dividend to fund brand investment. In meats, Oscar Mayer's category, Hormel reported third-quarter retail volume down 9.1%. In condiments, where Heinz faces Hellmann's, Unilever said its Foods volume fell 1.1% in the third quarter of 2026 on softness in developed-market retail, after moving earlier in the year to correct share losses in premium and avocado mayonnaise in the U.S.

The latest quarter and what to watch

In the quarter to June 27, 2026, organic net sales fell 1.3%, with price up 1.3 percentage points and volume/mix down 2.6 percentage points, weighed by meats and spoonables and by Easter timing, partly offset by retailers pulling forward inventory for summer grilling. The company raised its organic sales guidance and narrowed its operating income guidance. Maciel said on the call that it now expects 2026 Organic Net Sales down 2% to down 0.5%, including about a 100 basis point SNAP headwind, Constant Currency Adjusted Operating Income down 18% to 16%, Adjusted Gross Profit Margin down 50 to down 10 basis points and Free Cash Flow Conversion of approximately 110%. Adjusted EPS guidance is $2.03 to $2.09. For the third quarter, Maciel said to expect organic net sales down 2.5% to down 1.0% as the inventory pull-forward reverses, and Adjusted Operating Income down 25% to 23% as price investments step up. He also said the company expects 2027 inflation of 4% to 5%.

Those third-quarter results are due on November 4, 2026, eight days before the Investor Day. At the event, what to watch: whether the company sets guidance for 2027 and beyond on volume, margin and leverage; how much of the roughly $700 million of spending becomes permanent; whether the separation is dead or merely paused; and how it plans to defend Oscar Mayer and Lunchables while it concentrates money on Heinz.